Mom, A Life Well Lived

My mom was a pioneer in so many ways, a "jill of all trades" so much so that she never stayed in one place long enough to be honored for her work.

On Jan. 28, my sister Marcy and brother Clark and I will give the second annual Joy Darrow Memorial Scholarship in her name to an aspiring female journalist, as part of the Chicago chapter of the Association for Women Journalists.

Our mom died in 1996, at age 63, but had she lived, she would have been in Washington, D.C. to be part of the swearing in of the first African-American President, Barack Obama. It would have meant for her the culmination of decades of civil-rights work that took many forms.

As a journalist, she interviewed Hank Aaron early in his career as he faced racism in Major League Baseball. She interviewed Fidel Castro in the mountains of Cuba before the Revolution, and re-visited Cuba many times after, including in the years before her death. She did a story on AIDS in Cuba for me in the 1980s, having snuck away during an "official" visit to see the AIDS camps. She was an anti-Apartheid activist and loved South Africa.

In the 1960s, she covered many of Martin Luther King Jr.'s marches, in both Chicago and the American South. I recently found an article she wrote about one march where she described how well dressed Dr. King and his wife Coretta were, showing a different face to the world. She admonished other 1960s activists to follow that example as a way to further their cause.

She and my step-dad Steve Pratt covered the 1968 Democratic National Convention riots in Chicago, as they both worked at the Chicago Tribune then. But she was discouraged from covering hard news, and eventually smashed into the Tribune's glass ceiling. After the Tribune, she went in many directions, often at the same time.

Her myriad work included: 

-- Helping architect Buckminster Fuller in all his unique dreams of a geodesic dome.

-- Being a critical part of Environment Inc., an early environmental organization in the 1970s.

-- Working on and off at the Chicago Defender, back then one of the few remaining Black daily newspapers. She even had a section, Joy, named for her. She was managing editor for several years, and as a kid I went with her to the production plant and learned newspaper layout. I was published first in the Defender, at age 10, writing a children's consumer column in 1973.

-- She assisted Dempsey Travis on the national Black mortgage work he did, fighting to free mortgage funds for African-Americans. She also helped him with his book, An Autobiography of Black Chicago.

-- She travelled extensively on human-rights trips, including to China before and after Tiananmen Square; to Germany before the wall came down; to Russia; to Laos and Cambodia when they first opened to outsiders; to India several times; to South Africa during their first free elections after Apartheid; to Haiti to monitor elections; and again and again to Cuba, usually with a religious human-rights group.

-- Because my mom was a relative to famed attorney Clarence Darrow, she also often did work in his honor. She didn't like her stepmom's name, and after her divorce from my dad Hal removed the Baim name, so she instead claimed the Darrow name. Her work included being part of Darrow committees on public housing reform, and an annual dedication in Darrow's honor still held in Hyde Park every March. 

-- She also did public relations work for former Mayor Jane Byrne, Columbia College, and others.

She was constantly hustling, trying to find her way as a journalist and photographer, and as someone who cared deeply about human rights. But she never quite had the luxury assignments as a freelancer she might have had if the Tribune could have broken their sexist ways earlier in her career. I am not sure she ever quite got over the push and shove of that sexism, the way it can crush your spirit and dreams. But she didn't show it, she just kept plugging along.

In some ways, my mom was an enigma. She was a white Catholic girl from Milwaukee who married a Jewish man from Chicago, converting before they were married so that his parents would attend the wedding. Yet she pushed so hard for civil rights, cared so much about the rights of others, especially Asians, Cubans, South Africans and African-Americans, that I often feel it was a way to avoid the crushing defeats of her own life. It was a way to avoid the pains she endured when she was gang raped at a very young age when she first moved to Chicago. I did not even know about that attack until our family experienced a home invasion and attack in 1978 (which I write about elsewhere on this blog). The men who attacked her were Black, as was the man who tried to attack me in our home, stabbing me, Steve and Joy. So my mom finally opened up to me, only briefly and very cryptically, about her own experience. She wanted  to make sure I did not allow that incident to drive my life, to turn me racist, or to cripple my dreams. But she never spoke of it again, it was too painful.

So I feel I don't really know my mom, despite having been very close to her, and despite following as best I can in her very big footsteps. I think each of us knew a part of her, as did her hundreds of friends. But none of us quite knew all of her. Maybe that was the safest way she could handle her pains, to keep working on her passions, to try to overcome the frustrations of her life.

But had she lived to see Obama sworn in, I think she would have felt validated. That even though she suffered greatly, it was worth it. That society may change incrementally, that those changes may not always pass on to all people, but it does move forward. Mom, this victory was for you.

Comments

[converse all star femme]

decided to stick with my old Iphone. I'm on v2 firmware for a month

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[air max pas cher]

Your kids look so cute! We used to do so much for Halloween (yes my husband and I would dress up too) but them it all got to be too much since my husband loves to decorate for Christmas. He loves lights! So now we don't really do anything for Halloween because we start the stringing of the lights in early Novembe3!

[renaissance costumes]

wow.. I'm impressed by her courage. She really is one brave woman.. You should be very proud.

[Elaine Soloway]

Tracy, thanks for posting this about your mom. What a remarkable woman! She must've been a marvelous mother, too, to have her daughter honor her with this beautifully-written tribute. I did meet Joy briefly when I was in Mayor Byrne's press office. I was intimidated because I knew of all of her accomplishments. We had our lesbian daughters in common,but I didn't know my side of it until Faith came out in about 1990. I'll add your blog to my feed so I can keep up-to-date.
Best,
Elaine Soloway